Some of the hundreds who searched for hidden cash Saturday in Riverside. A truck driver said he saw @HiddenCash plant cash in the field.
Jennifer Cappuccio Maher — staff photographer

RIVERSIDE >> Shortly after he pulled his orange tractor-trailer onto a vacant field at Northbend and Market streets on Saturday, he noticed a man get out of a car carrying a white plastic grocery bag.

The man walked through the field and dropped small packets on the ground, said V. Carter, who didn’t want his first name used.

“I thought, is he planting something?” Carter, of Riverside, said. “He was nervous.”

Carter didn’t realize it at the time but what he saw was an @HiddenCash drop take place.

This was the first time Jason Buzi, a Bay Area real estate investor who started the @HiddenCash Twitter account, visited to the Inland Empire and gave money away.

The drop was made mid afternoon, hours after people had started converging on Fairmount Park thinking it would be a drop-off point.

Most of the drops have taken places in public open spaces such as parks or beaches.

At one point, Fairmount Park was busy with people celebrating children’s birthdays, family reunions or simply picnicking.

While some seemed to be enjoying a day at the park, other people were making their way through the vast parkland, their attention focused on their cellphones. Their attention left their phones only to stop at trees and search the trunks and vegetation around them for sugar packets filled with cash.

La Sonya Lewis, 43, of Moreno Valley and her daughters, Diamond, 18, and Dyna, 21, were among those at the park.

“It’s just something to do really, to see if I can find it,” Lewis said.

Moreno Valley residents Suzie Carrillo, 43, and Patricia Torres, 43, also searched Fairmount Park but after not finding anything decided to head over to Riverside’s Mount Rubidoux Park.

They invested a major part of the day on the search.

“At first, it was all fun and exciting,” Torres said. “It was, Oh let’s have an adventure.”

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Things became more challenging as they day got warmer, the clues limited, and they grew tired and hungry.

The two along with Carrillo’s daughter and Torres’ niece were sitting outside Mount Rubidoux Park’s entrance when @HiddenCash tweeted a clue about a certain billboard and an orange tractor-trailer.

The women wondered if they should continue their search. They decided to give it a try.

Carter, who watched the drop take place, said that after the man tossed all the sugar packets on the field, he got in a car and was on the phone.

“He was on his phone probably tweeting,” Carter said.

The man left and within minutes a television news crew showed up followed by countless numbers of people — some on foot, some in cars — who started combing the field.

“People were just stumbling all over each other,” Carter said.

Some climbed on his orange tractor-trailer. Others were crawling under it, making it impossible for Carter to leave the vacant field.

People, some young, some of different ethnic groups, looked for the cash packets.

As one woman got in a car to leave the area she said, “Look at the things people will do for money, including myself.”

During the search for the cash, a 50-year-old woman who was among those in the field dislocated her left knee when she fell down a foot-high dirt embankment, said Riverside fire Battalion Chief Bruce Vanderhorst. Fire Department personnel provided pain medication and an ambulance took her to a hospital, he said.

One of the lucky searchers Saturday was Danny Rodriguez 51, of Colton, who found $20.

He, too, had spend part of the morning searching two parks, including Fairmount.